#me: HMM INTERESTING!!!!

[swampybogg]

[ell-vellan]

Solas: Our people used to be here. Sera: Pfft, you say that everywhere. Solas: It is more true than you want to believe. Sera: I bet, right? Who wants to think about stepping on dead elves? Solas: Din elvhen emma him? Sera: Oh, you felt that one.

SO. This dialogue.

Setting aside that this is a running theme with Solas/Sera banter - that he trying to persuade/push her into becoming something more, either more Elvish or more of a leader, which may or may not just be Solas messing with her in return for her putting lizards in his bedroll - I was curious about the Elvish that he speaks here.

In the wiki, it says "din elvhen emma him?" is "meaning unknown." Which is curious because don't we know the meaning of these words separately, already?

(Stop me if this has been done before; I'm no expert.)

din = dead/death, not/isn't, "someone who is not". Falon = friend, Falon'din = friend of the dead, makes sense.

Elvhen = "Our People," the collective term for the elven race

emma = my, mine, i am, or within/full of.

him = become.

Taken altogether literally, "dead our people mine become." Elvish isn't a literal language, it's very figurative, with multiple possible meanings based on context.

Solas mutters this under his breath with disgust after Sera's disregard of his people's deaths. (For me, this dialogue happened in the Emerald Graves, though I don't know if it's location-specific; either way, he obviously finds this very disrespectful.)

I propose this phrase is Solas saying to himself something along the lines of, "My people died to become this?"

Which is. Yeah.

[mohntilyet]

my initial knee jerk reaction to lucanis/spite saying "family, enemies, contracts" was bad because it felt like an oversimplification but actually thinking on it i really love that lucanis forces himself into this box to make things make sense in his life. family is unconditional, enemies are to be killed, but contracts is so. interesting... man who promises mila that he will find her father because he does not fail contracts. the same man who tells effe that he will kill her slaver because he needs to turn her from a poor young woman that he sympathises with, into someone he can make a deal with. it's not kindness, it's not weakness, he's just fulfilling a contract, and crows don't break contracts. if he kills a bunch of racist blood mages during that process, then he's not breaking the rules, just bending them. a very convenient excuse to be a good man while still being a crow and assassin. and of course when spite is forced into him, he gets out of it with something familiar! by making another deal! something he could work with, something he HAS to work with, because being just an abomination is unthinkable. if he can work himself out of this problem like he's done with every other contract in his life, in his mind maybe there's some tiny chance that this becomes another job that he can claw his life back from.

[applestorms]

(tw for extensive discussions of dubiously consensual sexual situations, typical to canon. also spoilers for the decay route update)

honestly, one of the most interesting aspects of andrew's psyche that we get to see in the most recent decay route update to me is his nearly unending hesitancy about having sex with ashley, despite both his overwhelming desire to AND her incredibly blasé, Yeah Sure Let's Do It attitude in response to the question.

while the end of the burial route provides some key insight into ashley's point of view regarding this topic (e.g. if you go with the less enthusiastic/more teasing answer to andrew's question of "we're not like that, right? right??"), and the shots & such ending provides even more intrigue into her motivations, i think that decay presents two key reasons as to why andrew has continued to hold back for so long: his two core conflicting desires, and an inability to see ashley as her own full person. notably, both of these parts can easily be connected to his mother's childhood abuse and parentification of him as well.

with regards to the first point: andrew has two main overwhelming desires at the heart of his character that motivate most of his actions, which unfortunately for him are completely incompatible. andrew wants:

to be a normal, average person-- someone who can hold a steady, respectable job, fit in at the block party BBQs, and not attract any negative attention from the neighbors.

to fuck his sister.

to some degree, you could even read the distinction between the two main routes themselves (burial and decay) to be motivated by whether or not andrew can diffuse the tension between these two wants-- in burial, he gives up on his need to fit in with the rest of respectable society, presumably pushing him more towards the fucking-his-sister route; in decay, he struggles significantly to let go of this desire for normalcy, and the stress almost always breaks him. notably, in neither of these routes can he fully give up on the second desire-- really, his relationship with julia and the rest of his life up til the point that ep1 begins has been about him trying and failing to do so, so this makes sense.

(sidenote: i would also like to clarify that i think the Most key distinction between these two routes comes down to the decision you actually have to make to get one or the other-- namely, whether or not the siblings are able to trust one another. but anyways)

this focus on the first desire for normalcy is also interesting in that it seems to be one of the core desires that renee holds as well, as we see her so happily boast about during their interactions in ep2. honestly i could probably write a whole post about how much andrew (consciously or, more often, not) mimics his mother's behavior and takes on her standards and ideals, but the key point to pay attention to here is the fact that andrew has subsumed his mother's viewpoint in such a way that he is either not fully aware of or simply hasn't questioned in all that much depth yet.

we can also see this with the aforementioned parentifiication, which has really interesting consequences on how much andrew does (not) see ashley as her own autonomous person. pretty much every single childhood flashback we get in 3a shows the same terrible cycle:

andrew is told by renee that ashley is His responsibility -> ashley causes problems on purpose -> andrew takes the fall for her

frankly, we don't even really need that first step for andrew to fully internalize the idea that ashley's actions are His to take responsibility for. the horrible consequences of this are also quite obvious: not only is this pressure to take responsibility for someone else's actions an incredibly unfair burden to put on anyone, much less a kid, but it also continually pushes andrew to see ashley as something less than human, or as little more than an extension of himself rather than her own person.

the main conflict in decay really comes down to this conflicting desire between the two of them, where what both andrew and ashley want above all else is Complete and Utter control over the other-- andrew wanting control because he has again been groomed to see ashley as his full responsibility, and ashley wanting control to assuage her own insecurities and fears about being isolated and hated forever. the more sympathetic throughline underlying a lot of this is that what both of them seem to want is safety, to protect both themselves and each other from any and all situations outside of their control-- though, unfortunately, a lot of times those exact external situations are simply the other acting on this mirrored desire for control lol.

anyways, going back to the sex thing-- since andrew doesn't see ashley as her own person, since he sees her as incapable of taking responsibility for her own actions and therefore as someone who cannot make decisions for herself, due in large part to him automatically transferring this burden to himself, andrew also sees ashley's consent as essentially meaningless.

the more sympathetic reading here is that andrew does genuinely want ashley to be at least kinda into it as more than a manipulation tactic/transactional thing-- but i think it's also equally likely that andrew simply doesn't want to have to once again shoulder the full burden of Committing Incest on his own, and he doesn't trust ashley to ever be even capable of taking the fall for her own actions. the fact that andrew still ultimately sees ashley as Leyley and NEVER as Ashley Proper (as he himself recognizes at one point) really just reinforces this to me. he says it himself-- he practically raised this woman. and in this case, even above all others, ashley's actions are quite literally also his own. it all goes back to that initial mistrust, and he carries that resentment with him even after they get around to actually doing it. mutually dubious consent, truly in-fucking-deed.

[callixspod]

Persona 4 Golden Update but... Something's off. (Read ID: Important)

Expect to see more soon!

[gothicrepetitions]

Obsessed with how Lottie is one of the only Yellowjackets who is not mean to or annoyed by Misty. I’m not saying she’s exactly friendly to her but at the very least she’s polite and non-judgemental. Even when she’s dismissive or exasperated it doesn’t come off as an aversion to Misty herself (like when faced with Misty’s aggressiveness towards her in s2). In s3 ep2, Lottie even awkwardly hugs her and attempts to comfort her about Nat’s death and her own guilt. It’s even funnier because Misty is often annoyed, suspicious of and weirded out by Lottie,

[secretsimpleness]

Don't feed the crows. .. Why not? Inej, Kaz / Six of Crows (c) Leigh Bardugo

[adhd-merlin]

"I've been trained to kill since birth" is such a troubling statement but not at all in the way arthur intended

[sysig]

Reverberations, configurations (Patreon)

[vespidclan]

That'll happen of 404 and Sparkbreaks role swap

The role swap would have Sparkfreak (named 500) look more machinery than bug to allude to his name more, like a giant system divine machinery style kinda like this but in cat form, angry and spiteful.

And 404 would just be Moththorn, a weird girl who probably also ends up decapitated. Spark is still the freaky one

[bougiebutchbinch]

just to make it very VERY clear we love and cherish shen jiu here and think it was a cute and fun character trait for him to ruthlessly abuse a child under his care. that was, in fact, delightful and whimsical of him. we are fully in the yue qingyuan camp of enabling this horrid little monster, because he is a pretty & tragic woobie with a sad past, and we like to munch on popcorn while he commits his atrocities. we love redemption fics AND fics where he dies in agony. we enjoy watching his downwards spiral, driven by his own self-loathing and trauma, as he burns every bridge he's ever built by acting in a truly reprehensible manner and clinging to the shreds of his irrepressible pride with all of his fingernails, toenails, and teeth. Because he's fictional and it's fun to watch fictional characters be awful and manipulative to other fictional characters. and their fans are harming literally no one :3ccc

[biggestlen]

A terribly angled image of some silly Okazaki doodles I made while I was getting up to date with TDRP...... I adore her!!!!!!

Veronika's also here on my powerbank. these freaks, they're both iconic (and also my favourites from their respective series). The larger Hanano is a sticker I have no clue where to put yet so she's instead blue tacked onto my closet for now.......

some clearer(-ish) images ↓↓↓ konkonkonkon...

Perhaps I'll make some more polished digital fanart after I'm done with all the things i need to do. so much to do and so little time...

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

How could I forget my passion? Drawing fish fucks majorly! It's so fun to doodle them. They're full of smooth curves and long lines and teardrop shapes and spiky fins and all other things that are beautiful and fun to draw in the world :D Draw a fish, guys, it's awesome

[big-moon-little-moon]

a list of people (and non-people) who know Imogen and Laudna are dating as of episode 72 (two months after the kiss)

Chetney

Paté de Rolo, Laudna's dead rat familiar

Ulli, a skysailing instructor from Zephrah

Deanna, because she has absolutely scryed on them and put two and two together

F.R.I.D.A., because Deanna was very excited and told them

Zhudanna, because she thought they were a couple this whole time

Bruda, a cursed pirate skeleton lady with a gambling problem

[tozettastone]

WOULD you consider ever writing a Kakuzu×OC fic? One day? I think you blogged about writing Maddyverse instead of that, but would you try it ever?

I did indeed decide that it would be easier to make Hidan the elemental nations' best uncle Kakuzu the elemental nations' okayest dad in the Maddieverse as an alternative to the rather more challenging writing of a Kakuzu/OC story.

I think... I would definitely write a Kakuzu/OC fic, I feel like I probably have a few OCs left in me somewhere (shakes my works page until another one falls out).

But I am not sure I would be very good at writing it as a romance genre story. That's the real challenge of this current Itachi/OC romance fic, for me. Romances (in the modern sense of a piece of prose focused on the romantic relationship between two or more people that features a happy ending for the relationship) are... an interesting challenge. It's cool to think about them and try to puzzle them out, but I am not good at this kind of writing. So I could try it, but I'm not sure it would be very worth reading LOL.

I'm better at writing characters getting their mental health problems all over each other than doing so strange and uncertain a thing as falling in romantic love. But I could write Kakuzu and an OC smearing their mental health problems all over each other for sure. In the future, perhaps.